Toddmw
New Member
I finally got a bike that I can build a café racer, a 1982 Honda cm450e, but unfortunately the last guy went a little too deep into something he had no idea about. The frame is chopped with nasty welds that will have to be grinded down, the wiring looks like a 3 year old's crayon drawing, and the motor needs some work. I found a floating valve and loose set screw, it has both exhaust pipes but only half the length, and a bad speedo gauge and cable. The bike even has a residential light switch as the starter switch! WTF?! The bike ran when I picked it up, drove it the entire hour ride home. It had a bad backfire when coming to a stop from 60 mph, was sluggish to get up to speed, and had suspicious burnt gas deposits all over the engine. I fixed the floating valve with new valve retainers (only for one valve), reinstalled the set screw, but have not done a valve lash yet but plan to real soon. So now Im left with the VB carbs. They had some heavy deposits in the bowls, I'll be cleaning the fuel tank and replacing the fuel line. I am fairly new to a dual carb set up, and have a few questions. I would like to do individual filters (pod filters??) but don't know what kind of jetting to do. It currently has 115 main and 72 pilot, or vise versa? I was told that was the factory settings by the previous owner, but if you saw this bike you would know he has no idea what he's talking about. I have pulled both carbs off, stripped them bare, soaked them overnight in BG oil cleaner (best option for what I had laying around), and gave them a soft brushing to clean them up. I don't think I need a complete rebuild kit because the jets look pretty good, emulcifiers look good, float and valves look good, but the cut off valves are worn through. So I think I'll just buy a set of cut off valves and some gaskets to get it going good. At this point I can not find a manual anywhere and don't know how to sync the carbs PROPERLY nor do I know how to get everything back to factory settings, or to proper settings if it is suggested that I go with bigger jets for the pod filters. Im a huge fan of this forum and looking forward to all the old school tips and tricks you guys can throw my way.
